Cellophane Skies
by BellatrixLestrangey
Summary: Goretober, day 5: In The Air. Zuko finds a disk in the middle of the jungle. Azula doesn't like the feeling it emits.


There's something in the air, Azula can feel it but she can't place what it is. It comes on the wind and in the silence; a creeping feeling that something unfathomably sinister is on its way. It's that fucking disk that they found in the jungle. Things haven't been right since Zuko plucked it from a tangle of vines and roots.

Her mind wanders back to the hike. They day had been relatively normal; muggy and hot and with rain on the edge of the horizon. It was just a little hike, something to get her used to moving again after another period of being confined to a straightjacket. Zuko insists that her breakdown wasn't as severe this time around, she has to take his word for it because it was all a blur.

They had wandered for a bit, Zuko telling her that he has been wanting to explore the deeper parts of the jungle but was too intimidated to do it alone. Azula recalls having laughed and telling him that the word he had meant to use was 'scared.' He was always so scared.

This time around, she doesn't blame him, she is afraid too. She just wishes she could place what exactly is causing her such unease.

Regardless, she remembers a distant rumble of thunder as they trekked through the jungle. The jungle floor had still been wet from the last rainfall and it had begun to seep into Azula's shoes. Each time one of the two lifted their feet a sloppy slurping sound would follow. Azula's face had been bunched up in disgust the entire time. But she wasn't going to be the one to whine and cry to go back. She wishes that she had. Maybe if she had given some childlike complaining, Zuzu would have never discovered the disk.

Just when the mosquitoes had begun making happy work of the exposed parts of her neck, Zuko had come to a halt. He muttered something about having seen that bush before and Azula had chided herself for leaving him in charge of navigation. They wandered for hours until the jungle chatter had died away completely. Even the mosquitoes had retreated. A nervous prickle had chilled her entire body. She felt Zuko's hand on her shoulder. She didn't remember the last time he had done something like that, it had instilled a deeper sense of unease. She pushed them to keep walking, ignoring the soft half-ring, half-buzz that had swelled in her ear. When the noise had become nearly unbearable Zuko cut through it with a muffled, "what's that."

"Don't touch it."

But it had already been in his hands. A translucent thing with a very faint blue glow. He turned it over. For a moment she had thought of her fire. He had held it up and looked at her through it before dropping it. He picked it back up and held it up again, blinking.

"What?"

He'd never given her an answer, but she hasn't felt right since.

Perhaps not in a physical sense, but she finds herself uncharacteristically jumpy and on edge. Anxious and visibly so.

She sticks near Zuko and if he is unavailable she seeks out TyLee's company. And If not her's than her mother's or uncle's. She just doesn't want to be alone. It, whatever this thing is, will take her if she is alone.

"Are you sure that you don't need your medications?" Zuko asks.

Azula pinches the bridge of her nose and, having reached a point of frustration and stress, snaps, "Yes! I don't need medication, I need you to _believe _me."

"Azula, you're not even telling me what you think is after you. I can't protect you from some vague concept of fear."

Azula shakes her head. "It's...there's just something wrong, Zuzu. Can't you feel it?" She supposes she understands the look that he is giving her. By all means, he is right. Her vague expression of impending doom sound like a relapse. But if he could feel it. If he could feel whatever it is…

"I'm not crazy…" She adds softly. "Not this time."

Apparently, she wasn't convincing. She is in a straightjacket again with Zuko looking at her apologetically. She resists the urge to tell him that he has good and killed her, that they are going to take her away. She knows that will only make things worse for herself. Instead she settles for a quiet, "don't do this to me, don't leave me alone."

He presses his lips firmly together and looks away.

He always does that.

Whenever she is in a state he can never seem to look at her.

That horrible sense of doom increases with the distance between she and her home. She doesn't think that she will see it again. She is shaking. The doctors are gentler with her this time-likely because she isn't screaming and breathing fire this time around-they offer her words of reassurance.

She doesn't speak, she is too busy staring at the thing in the sky. A shimmer that isn't quite there, something like a mirage or cellophane draped across the sky. Her lips part they have to see it, it's so blunt. But they aren't looking at the sky. "What is that?" She nods skyward.

They follow her gaze and look at her with pity.

She can almost cry.

When the thing in the sky shifts and begins its descent she hopes beyond hope that they are right and she is wrong. For the first time she prays that she is going insane.


End file.
